Brad is a Lead Pastor with over twenty years of ministry experience. A Geek at heart, Brad has self-published a fantasy novella titled Finding Home: A Parable of Kingdom Life (iUniverse, 2008). Brad's blog is enjoyed by geeks everywhere who long to explore the intriguing zone "where geeks and faith unite.” His sermons are enjoyed by his church as well as by a growing online tribe of podcast subscribers from across North America and around the world. You can connect with Brad's Geek Faith Tribe on Facebook.

I’m incurably curious, for one thing. In fact, I’ve made it a way of life. I like asking the questions no one else is asking and making the connections no one else is making.

I love the world you made, but I daydream about other worlds, too. Or about places in this world no one has discovered yet.

My imagination is pretty active. No, that’s not true. My imagination is pretty awesome, if I may say so myself. To be clear, I give you the credit for blessing me with it, but there you go.

As you know, sometimes my imagination takes me away from things that matter because it’s easier to live in a dream world. Other times, though, it gives me a technicolor, epic perspective on life that other people don’t seem to have. So thanks for that.

I like using my imagination when I pray. Instead of just talking to the air, I approach your throne, see the rainbows, feel the power of it all, and it’s awesome. Knowing that what I’m seeing — or something like it — is actually real? Mind boggling. Knowing that all prayer is a form of time travel is particularly delicious. It makes me feel like a kind of time lord (you’re still the Lord of lords in my books, of course).

Thank you for the rich imagery tucked like treasures throughout the Bible. Being a bit of a Whovian, I enjoy traveling into the stories I read about. I particularly enjoyed David and Goliath, the Jericho battle, and when you walked on water. “Being there” has made all the difference. Brilliant.

That said, regular people don’t get me.

It’s like they think their work suits and power ties are more in touch with reality than my Yoda t-shirt. I wish you’d show them that here in North America, the clothing people wear is a kind of costume, and that we’re all playing roles in a larger story.

If that’s true, God, and I think it is, I don’t want to play a suit holding a briefcase that works in a cubicle. I don’t want to conform, to be one of many just like me. I want to explore the eccentricities of who I am, who you’ve created me to be.

When I find geeks that believe true geeks can’t be Christians, I just sigh. Because I don’t think a true geek could ever put all their stock in science — in laws and observable, testable facts. To me that sounds anti-geek, like a different kind of suit holding a different kind of briefcase. It sounds like bondage to a grey cubicle made of formulas and algorithms and a boring kind of math god who needs to get out more.

No thank you. The universe is a whole lot wilder and mysterious and colourful than science can describe. I think science is fun, I really do. But it has its limits.

Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t actually believe in The Force — or time-traveling call boxes or Klingons or zombies or Malcolm Reynolds. I just don’t think you’re a math god. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’re partial to geeks.

In the Bible, you say “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1).

Your buddy Enoch was teleported to heaven before he died. Geek! Noah built a giant boat by following instructions from beyond. Geek! Abraham left his hometown and settled in a foreign country, content because he was imagining a heavenly city to come. Geek, geek, geek.

The heroes of the Bible, you say, were aliens, strangers, foreigners on earth. Geeks! Prophets seeing the future, deliverers seeing the invisible, slaves avoiding the original (and far more terrifying) weeping angel, following a pillar of fire, walking through a sea as the waters parted … I could go on for pages here.

Geeks, every last one of them.

So thank you, God, for making me a geek in the true sense of the word.

May our tribe increase.

Amen.

PS: If you could let me know what happens in the second half of this season of Doctor Who, that’d be great.

Brad is a Lead Pastor with over twenty years of ministry experience. A Geek at heart, Brad has self-published a fantasy novella titled Finding Home: A Parable of Kingdom Life (iUniverse, 2008). Brad's blog is enjoyed by geeks everywhere who long to explore the intriguing zone "where geeks and faith unite.” His sermons are enjoyed by his church as well as by a growing online tribe of podcast subscribers from across North America and around the world. You can connect with Brad's Geek Faith Tribe on Facebook.

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Yeap, that sounds about right. i love that you’ve added the Doctor Who stuff. I sometimes have to remember Jesus is God, not the Doctor, LOL!! But I love how God has blessed my imagination and how He leads me to enjoy Geeky things like dressing up like an elf and going to the Medieval faire. He’s given me the idea to make Elven gowns for women to sell at the faire and to pass on the gospel. I’ve sold my first novel, so I’m hoping to squeeze in the gowns somehow. (I think turning off the TV might be the first step, LOL!) Anyway, Geek brothers and sisters in Christ, give that gift of Geekiness to Christ Jesus and allow Him to use you to change the world. A shame that Paul didn’t add Geekiness to the list of gifts from the Holy Spirit. That would have been too cool!!

[…] a technicolor, epic perspective on life that other people don’t seem to have. So thanks for that. The Geek’s Prayer So, my fellow Geeks, the world may laugh and scoff, but God smiles, puts on His very long scarf […]

I have this “thang” about speculative fiction being just for geeks. But when you describe Abraham, Enoch, Noah, and co. as geeks, well then, that’s company I’d be happy to keep.

I guess where my views digress is that I think God created every last one of us with the kind of creativity and imagination you describe. So it’s not really geeky at all to imagine yourself approaching the Throne when you pray, I don’t think.

In reality I think it’s sad that others don’t allow themselves to go there in their mind’s eye. No, we won’t get it “right,” in the sense that what we’re imagining of necessity will align with God’s actual Throne, but He’s given us plenty to work with in Scripture.

Of course, as you so well described, there are other gods that play a part in this.